Risk Management

I have recently participated in some risk management workshops which are almost always aimed at trying to identify the consequences of something untoward happening and the likelihood of that consequence occuring.

I am afraid that being the controversial figure that I am I keep asking why we cannot also try an identify the positive consequences of something and the likelihood of that occuring and then taking advantage of it.

We seem to spend a lot of time in our world and in our lives always trying to anicipate the worst and making plans to avoid it happening - I think that they call this risk mitigation.

I keep wanting to anticipate the opportunities that any event can create for me and then working on plans to take advantage of it.

I have no problems with identifying what awful things can happen, but then I want to ask how I can still find something useful in the awful thing happening, ie what are the opportunities that present themselves even when the awful thing takes place.

Take for example the recent set of horrific events in Indonesia with the Tsunami. There is absolutely no doubt that this was a horrific disaster and that we should put in place all sorts of warning devices and processes that will in future reduce the risk of such a horrific event ever having such a devastating impact and so minimise the loss of life and property that took place on this occasion.

That said, given the maginuted of the power of the event and the incredible amount of energy that it generated - energy enough to devastate entire regions, I wonder why no one has thought of ways to capitalise on the generation of that energy should the event occur again?

Is there a way of capturing the forces that are generated by a tsunami so that it not only powers electricity generation, for example, but in doing so actually harnesses and so reduces the actual force of the impact when it finally arrives on land?

It may well be that this is a nutty idea and that doing anything useful is impractical. Fair enough! However until someone actually considers the possibility and plays around with it looking at 'positive risk' management we will never know.

We have people who model earthquake behaviours and tsunami behaviours, could they not use the same models to see whether or not the energy is harvestable?

I am afraid that I have similar questions about tornados and violent storms which also generate enormous amounts of energy that seems to not only be wasted but actually require a lot more energy to recover from.

Are we capable of thinking up ways of harnessing these enormous forces of nature and putting them to use for us - at the same time reducing the impact that such forces of nature cause by channeling the energy into more productive and less destructive pathways.

Perhaps this is enough 'food for thought' on a Friday afternoon.